The Big SHOULD

I love my SImpkins/Shafer, but this morning I woke up and thought, I, the most unconventional of all of you, am sick, sick, sick of SHOULD's!!! (And the Post family I married into has their share, too!)

When everyone started in on me in their voices full of sorrow for Daddy's being stuck in such an AWFUL situation -- and not just that Hickory Creek nursing home was awful which it probably is -- but that all of his life he had withstood pain and pressure from everyone while he stood by his own convictions that if you go near a doctor, you end up worse off instead of better! He distrusted institutions and bureaucracy to the point of neuroticism, but who's to say that even though he was paranoid they were NOT out to get him?? And get him they HAD!!

Then Rita, John, and Nan all started in on me that I needed to get myself up there to SEE him!! SEE HIM??? Get up there to SEE DAD IN AN INSTITUTION???? To me, perhaps the most like Dad in many ways, both being extroverted and prone to unreasonableness, that meant GET HIM OUT OF THERE!! I had in my heart, understanding how important a person's convictions are to him, if he indeed has them to the level that Dad did, promised that when the time came I would remember how in One Hundred Years of Solitude, when the old dad "lost it," they tied him to a tree out front where he was still in the middle of things, involved in their lives, but couldn't hurt himself (or wander of, it sounds like). So you see, I had a conviction about Dad's conviction, and I also couldn't stand to be told SHOULD one more time! I felt, "If you say I should come up there, then you'd better be ready for me to be who am I and do what I do!"

Since I was a child, I have lived with performance anxiety from the great Simpkins/Shafer SHOULDS.
I am glad I got the chance that once to play out a part in helping Dad in MY way, not the way the rest of you actually intended when you laid the big SHOULD on me! And I know Nan and Rita and Don supported me, but I suspect it was the kind of very anxious support that you all would have felt had I been carrying Dad across a high wire to freedom! Now help me get freedom from the family SHOULD's by NEVER telling me what I SHOULD do again, AND never telling me "It's OK NOT TO" because that's just as bad. Being one of the "babies" means when you're 61, you still have "imbecile" written on your forehead I guess! ;/ And maybe I am an imbecile because even my two grown children tell me what I SHOULD do!!

My mission in life is to somehow spare my grandson from the great SHOULDs that will probably surround him. Nicolas, Grandma is gonna come and get you and take you to Belize where there are NO RULES!! ;)